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"Steinbeck is an artists; and he tells the stories of these lovable thieves and adulterers with a gentle and poetic purity of heart and of prose." —New York Herald Tribune
Adopting the structure and themes of the Arthurian legend, John Steinbeck created a “Camelot” on a shabby hillside above the town of Monterey, California, and peopled it with a colorful band of knights. At the center of the tale is Danny, whose house, like Arthur’s castle, becomes a gathering place for men looking for adventure, camaraderie, and a sense of belonging—men who fiercely resist the corrupting tide of honest toil and civil rectitude.
As Nobel Prize winner Steinbeck chronicles their deeds—their multiple lovers, their wonderful brawls, their Rabelaisian wine-drinking—he spins a tale as compelling and ultimately as touched by sorrow as the famous legends of the Round Table, which inspired him. This edition features an introduction by Thomas Fensch.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
- Sales Rank: #39038 in Books
- Published on: 1997-06-01
- Released on: 1997-06-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.80" h x .50" w x 5.10" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 174 pages
Review
John Steinbeck knew and understood America and Americans better than any other writer of the twentieth century. (The Dallas Morning News) A man whose work was equal to the vast social themes that drove him. (Don DeLillo)"
About the Author
John Steinbeck, born in Salinas, California, in 1902, grew up in a fertile agricultural valley, about twenty-five miles from the Pacific Coast. Both the valley and the coast would serve as settings for some of his best fiction. In 1919 he went to Stanford University, where he intermittently enrolled in literature and writing courses until he left in 1925 without taking a degree. During the next five years he supported himself as a laborer and journalist in New York City, all the time working on his first novel, Cup of Gold (1929).
After marriage and a move to Pacific Grove, he published two California books, The Pastures of Heaven (1932) and To a God Unknown (1933), and worked on short stories later collected in The Long Valley (1938). Popular success and financial security came only with Tortilla Flat (1935), stories about Monterey’s paisanos. A ceaseless experimenter throughout his career, Steinbeck changed courses regularly. Three powerful novels of the late 1930s focused on the California laboring class: In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and the book considered by many his finest, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). The Grapes of Wrath won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1939.
Early in the 1940s, Steinbeck became a filmmaker with The Forgotten Village (1941) and a serious student of marine biology with Sea of Cortez (1941). He devoted his services to the war, writing Bombs Away (1942) and the controversial play-novelette The Moon is Down (1942).Cannery Row (1945), The Wayward Bus (1948), another experimental drama, Burning Bright(1950), and The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951) preceded publication of the monumental East of Eden (1952), an ambitious saga of the Salinas Valley and his own family’s history.
The last decades of his life were spent in New York City and Sag Harbor with his third wife, with whom he traveled widely. Later books include Sweet Thursday (1954), The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication (1957), Once There Was a War (1958), The Winter of Our Discontent (1961),Travels with Charley in Search of America (1962), America and Americans (1966), and the posthumously published Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters (1969), Viva Zapata!(1975), The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976), and Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath (1989).
Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962, and, in 1964, he was presented with the United States Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Steinbeck died in New York in 1968. Today, more than thirty years after his death, he remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures.
From AudioFile
John McDonough's reading of this marvelous Steinbeck novel is not without its flaws, but they don't much diminish the charm of the performance. Tortilla Flat follows the exploits of Danny and his paisano friends, who live in squalid poverty and blissful idleness near Monterey, California. McDonough does not overact, and his gentle touch is well suited to the story. His accents and voices, however, are strangely inconsistent, as if he eventually tires of giving each character his own. Nonetheless, McDonough makes it work by bringing out the novel's humor and poignancy in all the right places. D.B. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
Most helpful customer reviews
109 of 112 people found the following review helpful.
An Arthurian Marvel
By David A. Wend
Tortilla Flat was an actual place in Carmel that John Steinbeck placed in Monterey. He took some stories about the paisanos (a mixture of Spanish, Indian, Mexican and Caucasian bloods) that lived in this marginal place consisting of shacks and, using the style of the Arthurian legends, spun these tales about Danny and his friends. They are meant to be humorous and serious at times, and the characters are larger than life. Certainly, no one could live as Danny, Pilon, Jesus Marie, Big Joe Portagee and the Pirate, consuming wine by the gallon, eating whatever they can steal and taking up and whoring with any woman they want, but this is hardly the point. The tales have an epic proportion to them like Malory's knights of yore but from the vantagepoint of the New World. This makes Tortilla Flat an entertaining and cleverly written book.
Danny is the central character of the book and the anchor that holds his group of friends together. They may be vagabonds but they have a moral code. An example: the Pirate lives with five dogs in a chicken coop. He takes some kindling wood into town each day and receives a quarter for it. He does not spend the money but hoards it. The paisanos estimate it to be $100 and think of stealing it, but are unable to follow the Pirate to where he has hidden the money. To get around this problem they invite the Pirate to live with him and try to discover the whereabouts of the money by suggesting it could be stolen quite easily. The Pirate eventually brings the money to the paisanos and discloses why he is saving it: the money is to fulfill a promise made to St. Francis to present a golden candlestick to a church in the saints honor. Why? Because the saint cured an illness one of his dogs had. Once the paisanos know the money is for a religious purpose they guard it diligently. The chapter in Tortilla Flat when the Pirate's vow is fulfilled is one of the most beautiful and memorable in the book.
This is a beautifully written book filled with humor and pathos. Mr. Steinbeck was criticized in writing this book by some readers who could not enter into the spirit of the book thinking he was glorifying the free and easy lives of Danny and company. This was not his intention; he was only telling stories inspired by the free spirits of the paisanos. Unfortunately for us, this criticism was bitter and Mr. Steinbeck never undertook such a book again. It is our loss that he could not give us another Tortilla Flat.
35 of 35 people found the following review helpful.
Wine, women, song and tears
By jmh
I highly recommended this short novel but I would not do so for everyone. First of all, you must appreciate the novel being written in 1935 and the language spoken by the characters reflect that time period, rightly so. It only takes a short while to adapt and I found the story moving along at a nice pace as the personalities began to assume colorful portrayals.
Steinbeck presents a group of men, or paisanos living in Monterey, California after the first World War. These are poor men, not especially motivated to work for a living and have a thirsty, never ending longing for wine. They circle around Danny, the fortunate one in the group, who inherited 2 small houses from his grandfather. Having no steady job, it makes sense to him to "rent" to his buddies. His buddies don't have jobs or revenue, either, so the compensation that takes place is in the form of companionship and the collective sharing of all foods begged from the back doors of groceries and restaurants. The hawking of whatever goods they come upon that can be bartered for the prized gallon of wine serves to be their highest priority. While seemingly desperate and pathetic, these men go to no end to rationalize their predicaments, twist truths and events to be self-serving and ultimately rewarding their endeavors by securing enough wine to satisfy them all. This can be quite a challenge, and the lengths they go to to fulfill their thirsty desires are hilarious. That the reader finds love and goodness in these fellows is reflected by the skill of John Steinbeck's writing.
The book is a quick read and it was not long before I became fond and wiped away a few tears of sorrow and joy for each of them and the circumstances these men find themselves. The practise of their Catholic religion is random; they use it when they need it, commit small crimes in the name of it and dismiss the many restrictive "Thou shall not's" when seized in the throes of passion or inebriation. A greater sense of loyalty knits these men to each other. While women acquaintances come and go, the paisanos rely on each other and faithfully commit to one another. In spite of the inevitable drunken fights and arguments, the following morning beckons another day. All the sins of the previous day are (literally) forgotten and forgiven. In the dawn of the new day anything is possible, and the adventures these men get themselves into is pure comic entertainment.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Old recipe, ethnic infusion.
By W.U.
If there was ever a writer that understood how people's fates were inextricably tied to their land, it was Steinbeck. The familiar setting of Monterrey county introduces us to a new cast of characters, pulled together by the gravity of their birthplace. Early on, one gets that feeling that the misadventures in which Danny and his friends partake, could take place in Tortilla Flat, and nowhere else.
Like Mallory’s story of King Arthur and the knights of the round table, Tortilla Flat has its heroes, quests, damsels, and holy grail. That is the original recipe. Add beans, paisanos, “lively” women, and a whole lot of wine. Simmer and reduce. The result is a rich, yet simple and savory tale; literary comfort food for those who have visited this land before through Steinbeck’s prose. Those that long for it.
Who knew that this one valley in California would be the well to spring forth the tragic drama of the ‘Grapes of Wrath’, the biblical struggle of ‘East of Eden’, the love and friendship of ‘Cannery Row’, the Arthurian romance of ‘Tortilla’ and…well, the man himself.
And no, I am not putting the ‘cart before the horse’. These tales, these elemental forces were there long before Steinbeck allowed his artistic sensibilities to be threaded by them. And will continue to roam this land, perhaps in different finery, but eternal all the same.
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